Advice

We've seen how morally bankrupt the British political system is on all sides. Blair sells the Libyans arms that are then used against their own people and then later Cameron bombs them from the air to keep a tight reign on the oil so you can nip down to the corner shop and pick up your newspaper which you can read while checking to see what channel the war is on.

It's highly unlikely I will die in the UK so this isn't about my well being. It is about advice to my British friends. Tariq Ali is the nearest thing the Brits have to a natural born leader with the wisdom and track record to do the right thing. 

Should the diaphanous mirage of left and right politics evaporate to reveal a singular entity pulling both left and right levers I put it to you my British friends that you have no better  strategy than to ally yourself closely with the repressed peoples of Pakistan. Should that ever make sense there could be no better guide than Tariq Ali who I suspect can navigate the delicate and precarious framework of doing the right thing without antagonising India. Both countries immigrants are crucial to keeping the the United Kingdom out of war. 

Though of course you might want to watch Tariq's latest talk in Australia and draw your own conclusion.

279 Shopping Days To Christmas

Earlier for the second or third time I tried to explain over the phone why the distinctive leitmotifs of time are changing. Why the linear model is increasingly looking like a fractally recursive and more chronologically compressed model of time than the one that existed say 30 years ago. Three people have just written what I've attempted to say in the last couple of hours and appeared in my feed almost sequentially so it seems right to share them right here and right now:

1. We Must Know
2. Neil Perkin
3. John Smallman

If you're feeling time starved and looking for inspiration then those three posts are a good start. Remember. You can't save time. Only spend it.

Is Advertising Immoral or Unethical?

The short answer you know anyway but that wont change anything. A blog post is unlikely to prompt a vendor of materialism into questioning their value set.

Let me start with an apology. At one point a couple of years ago I was flying between Shanghai and Hong Kong as the Global Account Planning Director on a piece of Coca-cola business. I was in the air so much that one week I ate more airline food than terrestrial meals. The hard work paid off. The creative was all over the show at the first meeting, and as everyone else was too busy I managed to rewire the creative script/animation and of course presented with unusual pride and conviction and sold the ad to the client. She's now head of Coca Cola marketing and is Rob's client. Lucky for him she's no-nonsense solid Gold and a bit of thinker too. We both held similar radical Maoist ideas that I don't hold today but was shocked to hear my client echo. 

I did not come up with the idea. I only rewired it to make sense. That ad went on to increase the RTD beverage sales of that drink 73% year on year. No small volume in the fastest growing and largest market in the world. That's a fuck load of sugared water. That's a lot of apologies to Chinese kids.

Was I responsible for that? I doubt it. The idea was cute, my timing was great, resources were thin and I had total licence to make it how I thought it should be made. It was Chinese New Year (but then it was Year on Year sales) and things came together.

But I can't claim to be innocent in the entire enterprise. If I'm honest with myself it was my presentation skills that nailed a quick sign off. The lovely account manager who handed me the reigns was actually cute enough to say I was "fantastic" when we presented. I wasn't, but then it would look OKish from someone who had a ton more experience around the world at a global level, and so I was happy to do it. She was happy not to get bogged down in endless back and forth which is a serious problem with Asian clients and junior Asian account handlers. She also tipped me off that my mediocre Japanese boss was losing face around me and that I wasn't to trust him. That advice alone put 10 000 bucks in my pocket when he eventually fired me. I spent it on a watch that was subsequently stolen in that taxi back in Hong Kong. So that's Karma for you. Easy come easy go.

So I'm just as guilty as you but I have given great consideration to how brands can be part of our future. 

The answer to whether it's immoral or unethical? 

Mostly immoral and largely unethical always (as with anything) contextual. Generally speaking for a planet that is groaning at the seams ecologically it's no different than selling arms to Libya before bombing them.

It's not like I'm suggesting I'm any better than you. I'm not. But I don't mind talking about it. So how exactly do you feel?